To think that family and aesthetic values change between generations?

[EffortlessDesmond]

We are sorting out the inherited crap in our cellar from DH's parents and grandparents ATM. It's mostly gubbins from the 1930s, and fairly mass-produced, but DH wants it treated reverentially. I'd throw most of it out, because it's ugly and no longer useful. But, it has illuminated an unsuspected area of dischord because DMIL left her body for medical research. I feel that's a really useful thing to do, and am minded to do the same, but DH feels it is depriving him of closure. Both of my parents are alive, but 88 and 90, divorced, and LC with my dad.

How would you feel?

Que?

About throwing away family ‘heirlooms’ or your parent leaving their body to the medical school?

I don't really understand the link you are trying to make between donating your (dead presumably!) body to medical research and appreciation (or otherwise) of antiques that previously belonged to a dead parent??

After my dad died we spent time at the mortuary and have taken great comfort in spending time and his grave side, I would have felt robbed of that without his actual body. So while I agree it’s a lovely, helpful, noble thing to do I can see why your husband would be hurt.

Either, really @Heronswater . Ugly, mass produced family 'heirlooms' which are mostly trash for car boot sales, rather than beautifully crafted craft or art.

And, I actually really approve of DMIL leaving her body to medical research. She qualified as a SRN in 1950. She died in 2022; so much progress has been made between those years, that I feel I ought to do something similar.

Ugly, mass produced family 'heirlooms' which are mostly trash for car boot sales, rather than beautifully crafted craft or art.

For most people family heirlooms are such because of the feelings behind them, the history, the memories. Who cares if they are mass produced? Who are you to say they aren’t art?

You sound like a snob who has a limited emotional intelligence.

@Motheranddaughtertotwo DH is very hurt by it, and I completely don't get it because I was with my DMIL in thinking that if you are interested in science and medicine and health, then surely your dead body should be used to train young medical students after you have expired?

@Swiftswatch I will completely acknowledge aesthetic snobbery. I am, and quite proudly.

If none of it is stuff that you want to actually use or have on display, for whatever reason, then I suppose you need to come up with a number of boxes that can be kept. 2 or 3 maybe? Depends if you need the space.

Thankfully my DM has an empty loft and has given all unnecessary tat to charity shops. Sadly, the same cannot be said of my FIL who had a house full of crap, 17 years later I’m still surreptitiously getting rid of it.

I have thought about leaving my body to science but never given any thought to the bereaved not being able to lay a loved one to rest.

@SheWoreYellow I use her saucepans daily. I love her collection of Scandi art glass ducks and have them on my windowsill, and have added my own. But I don't really want to inherit the whole house package from 1970 and to have to live with it, plus her parents' stuff. They were dead before I met DH. I am 66, and I still like to think I have some future. I am not ready to look back.

Are you saying he wants her old things as a physical reminder of her, because he couldn't bury her body? Not trying to be snarky just trying to understand

I don't think so @ricepuddin . I think he wants to say farewell sooner rather than later, and the fact that her giving her body to science has a two year run out means the final farewell is postponed. I understand his view. I just don't share it.

When you donate your body, the remains of it are eventually returned to the family for burial or cremation, so there is closure in the end (although delayed).

I think you should respect your DH views about his family's belongings. They were items that were chosen and used by people he loved, and while you shouldn't need to display them in your home, I think its rude of you to refer to them as 'crap' and be so dismissive.
Your MILs decision to donate her remains means he has lost the focus of her body to mourn, which matters to some people. In this case the physical objects may take on even greater significance.
While it is a very worthwhile act of your MiL, sometimes relatives struggle with the idea their loved one will be an 'exhibit', maybe dissected and handled by students (albeit with strict protocols around respect) and also the delay, sometimes of years, before a service can be held with the remains present, which can delay closure. So I think any decision should really take their views into account.

There is a two-year limitation imposed so we shall have her cremated remains returned for interral with DFilLs, and they will be placed in her family wall.

Call me heartless, but personally, I am not even slightly interested in what's left behind. I loved the living person.

I saw my much loved DMIL a few hours before she died, my DH didn't. SHe was not clinging to life at 93, after seven years of advancing dementia.

I’m not at all sentimental about “stuff”, that’s not a generational thing, that’s just me. I have a single small item from each of my Grandparents. All I want from my parent’s house when the time comes is half a dozen photo albums, the jewellery and two books. I don’t own loads of stuff myself and I don’t keep loads of things from my children’s childhoods either, a couple of particularly nice cards/pictures they drew, one first baby hat each and that’s about it. Tens of thousands of photos and videos though!

I don’t mind that DH has a couple of boxes of “heirlooms” from his parents and grandparents but we have enough space they don’t get in the way. Eventually I expect our children will put it all in a skip/charity shop, no one wants random teasets in loud patterns, album upon album of other people’s holiday snaps etc unless they belonged to people they actually knew. If it’s all just in boxes and never looked at or appreciated I don’t see the point in keeping it.

All that said if she died in 2022 and you’ve not even buried her yet I think you’re rushing things to expect him to be ready to throw lots of stuff away. What’s the hurry? Let him grieve first.

Thanks everyone. DH has astonished me with his headlong decluttering today. All the stuff that has been wished on us is being sorted into keepsakes, sell, charity shop and skip. He has been even more ruthless than I would have been.

@Purplestripe your approach and outlook is similar to mine, but with regard to the grieving, because DMIL was so old, chronically ill with fibromyalgia and scoliosis, and hated residential care, plus her confusion worsening steadily from the dementia, she was fairly determined to go, and to a point we were all relieved that she was released from her suffering.

It's been very interesting to work out how to dispose of all the too-good-to-throw-away and might-be-valuable stuff. We decided that the best way to recycle two generations worth of attic junk was to send it all to our favourite hospice shop, and let the bric a brac traders trawl through it for their own interests. So the charity benefits from selling a donation, and the traders get something quite nice to sell. And we are very happy to have an emptied, tidy cellar.